Fox Trail Memory Care Living at South River

I highly recommend this memory care facility for anyone suffering from dementia and/or Alzheimer's. The facility feels and looks like a home wherein each resident has their own room and share the communal living room, dining room, outside porch, etc. The aides attend to each resident as if they were helping family members. The house manager is conscientious, professional and very concerned about all of her residents. I know I made the right choice in putting my 84-year old mother who is in advanced stages of Alzheimer's in the best place possible at Fox Trail Memory Care Living at South River.

If you’re reading this review, I know from my experience this is a trying and extremely stressful time. Trying to find the absolute best care for a loved one, while also grieving the gradual loss of your loved one to dementia is daunting.
I typically hate to write a negative review about any business. But, retrospectively, having had more information at the time would have been very helpful and may have spared our family further pain. I wish I would have had more access to candid feedback, therefore I feel it’s my responsibility to share my experience for the next person.

My father was a resident at the Fox Trail Memory Care south river facility for a total of five months. It was our desire for him to stay in the same facility until his passing however we ultimately had to move him as we did not believe this facility was capable of providing adequate care.

I’m aware that no facility is perfect, and I have no expectations of perfection. There’s always good and bad so let me start with something positive. Most staff members from the caregivers to the management team, seemed to be kind hearted and well intentioned people who perform a difficult and demanding job. Unfortunately, there was a lack of competence and consistency in their care which makes me struggle to find more positives.

I’m of the strong opinion that the facility was woefully and consistently understaffed. It was common to have 2 staff members care for 12-14 residents. Their responsibilities included not only resident care such as bathing, dressing, feeding but also ancillary house care such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, trash removal, and resident stimulation and activities. As a result, the facility was never consistently good in any area.

Specifically the issues we dealt with in our time there was:
Issues with cleanliness (specifically bathrooms)
Issues with building maintenance such as non working toilets, warped flooring that was left unresolved for months
Consistently Lost items including hearing aides, glasses, iphone
Mixed up clothing (residents wearing other residents clothing)
Poor patient hygiene (lack of soap and paper towels consistently in bathrooms)

To be fair, the facility did not encounter every one of these issues on a daily basis however these issues were far too frequent to be the occasional outliers. The issue was a complete lack of consistency.

When these issues were brought to the company’s attention, they had acknowledged their shortcomings. They had recently hired a new management team who met with the families and put together a corrective plan of action. This management team seemed competent and caring and for this reason we were in no rush to leave. Unfortunately the change came far too slowly for us. To be accurate, we saw an effort in the form of hiring cleaning services and putting funds into building maintenance however the underlying problems all related directly to resident care & the lack of adequate staffing did not change in our time there. I believe the lack of staffing contributed to every issue I outlined plus a very poor employee morale.

I clearly could not recommend this facility at this time. I certainly hope they do improve their operations for the good of the residents. If you are looking at any one of their facilities I would strongly encourage you to ensure that these issues have been remedied.